The Calm
by tempewise
Summary: I predict a whoooole lot of angst. Brenda has been shot. Sharon is not sure that her reactions are appropriate and she's trying to figure out what that means. Brenda is fighting for her life. I started writing this at work and I'm not sure if I'll finish it. Let me know what you think, please.
1. Chapter 1

Sharon Raydor's hands shook as she exited her car and made her way toward the hospital doors. She was not used to feeling quite as helpless as she did at the moment. She had made this walk countless times. As the head of Internal Affairs, it seemed that she wound up in the cubic, white monolith that was the Good Samaritan Hospital at least twice a month- whether to speak with the victim of a trigger-happy police officer or, much worse, an officer wounded in the line of duty.

Unfortunately, this was a case of the latter and Captain Raydor's damned hands had not been steady since she had been informed that Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson had been shot by a suspect during an interrogation.

_He's no longer simply a suspect_, she thought darkly. She could understand much of her reaction to the news of the attack on Chief Johnson. Her anger was understandable. Had proper protocol been maintained, a suspect would never have made it to the interrogation room with a weapon. A little worry would be appropriate as well, as Sharon and Brenda had grown more than a little close during the whole lawsuit mess with Goldman and the business with the leak. By common definition of the word, they could even be considered friends, so her desire to find out Brenda's condition was totally normal. However, the sheer panic upon receiving Chief Pope's call about the incident and her blind rage at both the shooter and the bastard who let the gun slip past may have been less that fully appropriate.

She'd gotten the call at 8:30pm, just as she was sitting down for a very late dinner and she'd spent the past six and a half hours questioning the officers whose jobs it had been to protect Brenda and to keep an incident like that from ever taking place. She had cross-examined each officer carefully, her voice cold and precise, all the while fairly vibrating with the need to get to the hospital and make sure her friend was alright. It was imperative that she see with her own eyes that Brenda was still breathing.

As she followed a young woman in green scrubs down the winding halls of the post-surgery recovery floor, Sharon attempted to even her breathing and steady her still trembling hands. There was really nothing she could do to calm her erratic pulse or to ease the knot in her stomach but if she could just project the quiet poise that had become her trademark during her years of service, maybe she would feel like her old self in time.

Her guide stopped at an unassuming door of pale, sturdy wood and informed Sharon that this was Chief Johnson's room. Sharon inhaled deeply in a last ditch effort to stave off tachycardia. Her heart pounded defiantly back at her.

Well, she couldn't stall forever. She pushed her glasses further up on her nose, flicked her hair back over her shoulder, and strode into Brenda's room.

* * *

Brenda's mouth was dryer than it had ever been. On its own, that would have been unpleasant enough; unfortunately, that was not the only thing troubling her. She felt as if garden gnomes in pointy hats and baseball cleats were hosting a Double Dutch tournament inside her skull. On top of that, she was pretty sure she had woken up on the surface of the sun. There could be no other explanation as to why it was so unbearably bright and hot in her bedroom. It got hot in Atlanta, yes, and bright, but this was way beyond the norm.

She felt a cool hand graze her forehead and only then did she realize what had happened. She must've come home drunk.

"Oh, _no_."

The hand quickly retreated.

"I'm sorry, mama. I'm so sorry." Brenda Leigh had to explain things to her mama. She'd never had a hangover in front of her parents before. Her daddy was gonna kill her. They didn't even know that she'd ever had alcohol – besides a teeny, tiny glass of cheap champagne with the family every New Years. And now she'd ruined everything by – what? By drinking too much at a party, catching a ride home, and sneaking upstairs into bed only to be found by her mama in the morning? She was going to be grounded forever.


	2. Chapter 2

Sharon stopped short at the sight of Brenda in a hospital bed. She'd seen officers in recovery before but this was not just any officer. Sharon was used to Brenda: The Unstoppable Force. The blonde seemed to be constantly moving, catching suspects in their lies as if she were catching flies with honey. Even in the interrogation room – where Brenda always got her man – the southern belle's voice practically dripped with charm.

This was completely different. This was wrong. Brenda's skin, usually golden from exposure to the California sun, was terrifyingly pale. Thin, blue veins were visible weaving paths from her wrists to her elbows. Sharon could see the beginnings of green and purple bruises on the expanse of sternum visible where Brenda's thin hospital gown had shifted and Sharon was forced to imagine the paramedics roughly compressing Brenda's chest in a a furious effort to keep her heart beating. Sharon attempted to swallow past the lump in her throat as her eyes began to sting. Brenda had always been tiny but she'd never looked so _fragile_.

As horrifying as her shrunken frame was, what drew Sharon's eyes at last was Brenda's midsection. Where everything else seemed to have diminished, beneath the blanket Brenda's abdomen appeared to have swollen. Ash Sharon pulled back the cover, her mind screamed at her to stop. The lingering rational parts of her warred with her arms – insisted that it wasn't right, that it was an invasion of privacy, unforgivable.

Sharon acted too quickly to pay any heed to those rational parts and the regret was immediate and excruciating. Beneath the blanket, beneath the flimsy cotton gown, Brenda's abdomen was covered in layers of gauze. Sharon could see the faint shadow of blood through the top layer and she quickly – though gently – covered Brenda back up.

She wanted to vomit. She could no longer hold back the tears as she looked down at her friend. Her skin prickled in the silence. Never in the history of their acquaintance had Brenda been so quiet. She willed her to wake up. To open her eyes and argue with Sharon over something stupid. Nothing happened.

* * *

Sharon sat in the visitor's chair next to the bed and looked at Brenda, watched her breathe, listened to the monitor's constant reminder that Brenda was still alive. Only then did she notice the flush on Brenda's cheeks.

Sharon gently rested her hand on Brenda's forehead and gasped at the heat. Brenda's eyelids fluttered and her lips began to move. Sharon snatched her hand back and leaned her head closer, trying to make out the words.

"I'm sorry, mama. I'm so sorry."

Something definitely was not right. Almost as soon as the thought crossed Sharon's mind, all hell broke loose.

Every machine seemed to scream at once. A swarm of people clad in blue and green poured into the room through the pale, wooden door. The current pressed Sharon against the back wall and she was absolutely unable to move.

Brenda had grown entirely limp. She was merely a ragdoll that the children in blue and green fought over. One of them tilted her head back as another shoved a tube down her throat. After that, the guide in green from before began to compress Brenda's already bruised chest. Sharon winced at the inevitable damage to Brenda's already fragile frame.

While the girl in green compressed and a boy in blue squeezed air into Brenda's lungs, another blue person abruptly swept aside Brenda's blankets. She called out for medicines with important sounding names while inserting a thick, rubber tube directly into a vein at the start of Brenda's thigh. Sharon drew in a gasping breath and escaped the cerulean blur of Brenda's room.

She was suffocating. She wiped at her eyes but it made no difference. She had to get away from there or she knew she would drown.


	3. Chapter 3

Brenda knew that something was not right. Bits of her life were coming at her – flashes of memory. There was no way that she was in Atlanta. She didn't live in Atlanta anymore. No, she'd moved to D.C. She'd been trained – trained damn well – at interrogation. She cracked suspects like her Daddy cracked open pecan shells. Come to think of it – and now she was thinking of it – she didn't even live in D.C. anymore. It had been years since she'd moved across the country to LA to accept the job offered her by Will Pope.

Ah, Will Pope. What a jackass. A very, very bald jackass. She contemplated giggling but something told her that giggling would be a very bad – and very painful idea.

Oh, pain. Oh, _fuck_, pain. She regretted calling attention to it because now it seemed that everything hurt. Why did everything hurt?

All of the sudden, the bottom seemed to drop out of the world. It was like sitting on the front porch in the south when there's a tornado watch on. At first, the world is quiet. Not a pleasant quiet, an ominous quiet. The air is thick and tastes faintly of iron and rain that hasn't fallen yet. The sky will turn a muddy green and you know that you had best get somewhere safe – haul a mattress down into the storm cellar and hide beneath it until it's over.

This feeling was almost but not entirely exactly like that.

That cool hand left her forehead and the tiniest whisper of a breeze blew her way. It brought with it a very familiar smell. A comforting smell that she couldn't place. Some sort of flower.

A split second later, she heard the tornado sirens go off. _Not tornado sirens. No. Not sirens._ It was getting increasingly hard to form a thought. She couldn't move her body and there was a burning in her chest. _Oh, Lord. _Was her heart on fire? _No. Not a fire. _It wasn't beating. Oh, God! Her heart was not beating! She felt her head tilted roughly back as something cold and sharp was shoved into her mouth. Then, blinding pain. Hard plastic tubing snaked its way down her throat and she wanted so badly to scream.

Somebody was crushing her now. A giant, grinding her bones to make his bread. He was battering her chest so ferociously, she wasn't sure how it was possible that her heart had not been pulverized.

In all of the shifting and jostling and strangers pulling her apart, Brenda's eyes opened the tiniest bit.

_ This must be what it's like to be lost underwater_, she thought. Her lungs burned until air was suddenly and rhythmically pumped into them. She took that moment to look around. Everything was blue and green and rushing about but she couldn't possibly be under water. There were too many people down here with her. As realization hit, her heart would have pounded if only it had been beating. She was surrounded by doctors and her body was burning from the inside out. She knew that if she didn't calm down, the doctors would only have more trouble so she tried to focus on something – anything – other than her quiet heart and burning blood.

Suddenly, the fluorescent lights bounced off of something shiny behind the sea of doctors. Brenda fought to focus on whatever it was before the rapidly approaching darkness caught up with her. The light was bouncing off a pair of black-rimmed glasses, behind which were a pair of well-known olive green eyes.

_Sharon._

The instant Brenda thought it, Sharon turned and swept out of the room, her hair streaming behind her. A moment later, the darkness swept in.


	4. Chapter 4

Sharon sat shivering in the waiting room. She couldn't erase the image of Brenda surrounded by medical personnel. Every time she blinked, she saw them buzzing around the chief, injecting her with whatever was in reach.

She shook her head and looked up as a small group entered the waiting room. Sharon was not surprised to see the entire Major Crimes crew spill into the empty waiting room. They were led by Lt. Provenza, hanging on to the string of a balloon emblazoned with the words "Happy Turkey Day!" above a giant cartoon turkey. Louis Provenza was hopeless in hospital gift shops, far too worried about the gift's recipient to be bothered with the purchase itself.

From where she sat rather deflated in one of the stiff pleather chairs, she took a moment to observe Brenda's team before they saw her. Provenza's annoyed expression barely covered his obvious worry. Behind him, Lt. Flynn's eyes darted toward the unmanned reception desk and his agitation was palpable. As he absentmindedly took a seat, Tao's forehead bunched as if he were calculating Brenda's odds and planning a method of treatment. To his left, Buzz looked sick with worry. Julio looked around the waiting room as if trying to distract himself from his own thoughts. That's when he noticed Sharon.

"Captain?" The entire squad looked up and each looked more incredulous than the last to see her there.

"Oh, God. You're not investigating this, are you? She didn't even get a chance to pull her weapon!" Sharon winced at Provenza's remark.

"Chief Johnson is not being investigated. She is in no way at fault for the events of last evening. I came because Ch—I came because Brenda is my friend and she could be dying."

Provenza's eyes widened with obvious fear. "Dying?" He shook his head. "No. We heard that she made it through the surgery alright. That she was in recovery." Sharon pulled her glasses off and pinched the bridge of her nose. None of the men had ever seen her look so tired.

"I was in the room about an hour ago. All of the sudden, something went wrong. When I left the room, her heart wasn't beating. I don't..." Her voice cracked and before she knew it, tears were rolling down her cheeks. She brought a hand to her mouth, the other arm crossed her midsection as she doubled over.

The men looked at each other in shock. Their collective spines tingled. There was something decidedly not right about seeing the wicked witch cry. If she was a wreck, then they could only imagine the shape that the Chief was in. Andy Flynn took the chair to her left and brought an arm around her shoulder. Sharon let herself sink into his warmth for a few moments before sucking in a calming breath and straightening back up in her seat.

"I'm sorry. I'm better now. I just needed a moment to lose it. I've got it back now. Thank you." Sharon sniffled and cleared her throat. Andy patted her on the shoulder before reaching into his pocket and handing her a handkerchief. Sharon was grateful for his presence. After Brenda, Andy was the closest thing she had to a friend in Major Crimes.

As they all sat in a very awkward silence, each of them gradually losing their minds with worry, Sharon thought of how special a division Major Crimes really was. She recalled how she'd originally assumed that the whole department was just an excuse for Assistant Chief Pope to employ his ex-mistress and felt immediate shame. No, Major Crimes was a vital division and a family in and of itself.

She observed how each team member grew increasingly nervous as time flew by. Flynn rolled his AA chip back and forth across his knuckles. Tao mumbled medical facts under his breath. Provenza twiddled his thumbs. Even Sharon found herself checking her watch every three minutes. If they didn't get word on Brenda's condition soon, they would end up driving each other insane. Nearly an hour later, Sanchez's head snapped up at the sound of sneakers on linoleum.

A good looking man in light blue scrubs approached them with a solemn face and Sharon's heart leapt into her throat and as the entire group stood to meet him.


	5. Chapter 5

_Note to the readers: Oh, my goodness. It's so strange to actually have people read my pitiful attempt at fanfic. I feel like maybe a lot of you clicked the wrong link and it led you to me, but I'm happy as a lark that you stayed. To the reviewers- holy wow. Thank you so much for reviewing! I'm so sorry that I left it on a cliffhanger! If you can believe it, I didn't even realize it was a cliffhanger because I'd already started writing this chapter. The only reason that it took so long to post was because I've been out of town for a work weekend. For those of you who don't know it, I work in an Emergency Room. I actually went around polling the nurses on how long a laparotomy would take if complications occurred. I had to tell them all I was writing a "short story." :) Anywho- I'm not going to drag this note on any longer. I hope you enjoy this chapter._**  
**

"You are all here for Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson?" the man in blue asked, cocking an eyebrow.

The ragtag group, noticeably disheveled from their time in the awful waiting room chairs, nodded at the doctor, still holding their breaths.

"Well, my name is Dr. Hewitt. I'm the surgeon on Brenda's case." He paused as if holding for questions but no one dared speak so he cleared his throat and continued. "Ms. Johnson, as you know, presented with a gunshot wound to the abdomen. By the time she got to us, she'd lost a lot of blood. We started with a deep peritoneal lavage. During the procedure, we flush the abdominal cavity with fluid in order to gauge the internal bleeding. Her wounds were pretty severe so we felt the obvious thing to do would be to perform an immediate exploratory laparotomy." Only Tao nodded. "That way, we could get in and try and find out how bad the damage was and where the bleeding was coming from. Now, women have higher chances of complications during that kind of a surgery and I'm afraid that's what happened with Ms. Johnson."

Sharon's throat constricted and she clenched her teeth in an effort to avoid breaking down. _No, no, no, no, no._

Dr. Hewitt glanced at her and must have been surprised at the emotion he saw there because he rushed to reassure her. "Make no mistake, Ms. Johnson is quite stable now!" There was a collective sigh of relief from the group and if Sharon didn't know better she could have sworn that she heard Lt. Provenza calling Dr. Hewitt some pretty nasty names under his breath. "Once we got a look inside her abdomen, we found that Chief Johnson had experienced severe injuries to her large intestine and liver. The extensive trauma to those organs lengthened the surgery and during the extra time under anesthesia, Ms. Johnson reacted badly to the drugs. I'm sorry to say that nobody caught it. Her fever spiked while she was in her recovery room and her heart failed." He shook his head. "We got her heart beating again and gave her some drugs to bring the fever down. They appear to be working. We won't know if she sustained any brain damage until she wakes up but if all goes well, that should be in a few hours. If you want, you could all take this time to go home and shower or maybe get something to eat. She won't know you aren't here."

For a moment, Sharon wanted to slap the good doctor across his pretty face. First, Brenda's heart fails and nobody notices it, and then he suggests that she leave Brenda alone with them so that they can miss something else that could kill her.

It didn't take a second for Doctor Hewitt to read the expression on Sharon's face. "She'll be in good hands. After the mishap with the anesthesia, we will monitor her twice as closely."

Sharon glanced down at herself. She had to admit, she was a bit worse for wear. And it wouldn't take her but a moment to get cleaned up and get back to the hospital. Brenda would be sleeping for hours. Sharon nodded and turned to go but was stopped by Dr. Hewitt's next question.

As she turned to go, Dr. Hewitt voiced a thought that hadn't even entered Sharon's mind. "By the way, has anybody notified Ms. Johnson's parents of her condition?" Sharon could have kicked herself. Clay and Willie Rae would be nervous wrecks and they'd be so angry at not being notified immediately.

"I called them while the chief was in surgery," Flynn said, pulling a post-it note out of his front shirt pocket. "They caught the red eye arriving at 8:20am. They should be here just in time to see her wake up."

"Oh, good. And Ms. Johnson's husband? I'm sure you've notified him but he doesn't appear to be here…" the doctor trailed off awkwardly.

Flynn rushed to clarify this problem as well. "Chief Johnson and her husband are separated. I didn't think to call him but I probably should do that now."

Sharon's eyes widened at this news. When had Brenda and Fritz separated? She had known that Fritz had accepted a job back in D.C. but it hadn't eve crossed her mind that… Maybe she and Brenda weren't friends in the literal sense. A friend would have known about a separation. _Ugh. Brenda is in there recovering from a gunshot wound and you are out here boohooing to yourself because you aren't made privy to every aspect of her life. Real mature, Sharon. Glad to see you've got your priorities straight, old girl. _Sharon shook her head and excused herself to leave. Just two hours. She'd be back in two hours tops.


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note: Hello! I'm sorry it has taken me so long to post this chapter. It's been written for a while but there have been a lot of terribly exciting (but mostly just terrible) goings on occurring in my neck of the woods. I'm sorry my chapters have been so short and this one's pretty much no exception. Things always look so much longer in a word document. On the plus side- this one's not really a cliffhanger! Thank you for the new reviews. You are all terribly wonderful about feedback and I'm so grateful. I'll end this by urging you all to watch "Passion Fish." I'm rewatching it for the umpteenth time and you all should rewatch it, too. Or watch it for the first time! You're in for a treat! Just ignore the horribly misplaced, moody electric guitar riffs and falcon hair in the beginning. **

Sharon drove home with the radio all the way up. She usually drove without music, utilizing the time behind the wheel to mull over the aspects of her investigations. Today, however, her thoughts churned about in her head, making her nauseous and slightly dizzy. She chose instead to drown out her thoughts with "Eye of the Tiger." She sang along at the top of her lungs in an effort to stave off exhaustion. She would be damned if she was late getting back to the hospital because she fell asleep at the wheel and wound up in a ditch somewhere.

She parked in her usual spot and nearly ran to the house, cursing the necessity of locked doors as if even the world's evils existed simply to slow her down. She was determined not to lose steam. If she slowed, she'd stop and if she stopped, she'd let Brenda down. That simply could not happen so she kicked off her shoes at the door and tore off her clothes as she ran up the stairs, leaving her jacket, shirt, and bra wherever they fell.

Racing into the master bath, she turned on the shower and let the water heat up while she removed her skirt and underwear. Finally, she stepped into the shower and hissed as the water seared her skin. She wouldn't allow herself to make the temperature more tolerable, though. She wouldn't make herself more comfortable while the closest thing she'd had to a best friend in years lay broken and alone in a hospital.

Sharon cursed under her breath. These flashes of morbid self-pity were doing nothing to help her. She decided that she would allow herself five minutes to fall apart and then she did. It started slowly at first. She sniffled as she massaged shampoo into her hair, a few tears trailing down her cheeks, getting lost in the spray from the shower head. As she rinsed out the shampoo, she picked up her pace. She thought of what would happen if Brenda woke up with brain damage. She'd seen it before – officers shot in the head waking up completely different people. It had happened twice in Sharon's time on the force.

The first, a young female officer has awoken from a three day coma with the mental capacity of a six year old. The young woman's mother had had to move in to take care of her daughter. The last Sharon had heard, the officer had been moved to a care facility after her mother's death. Would Brenda become like that? Forgotten about in some facility somewhere with a box of crayons and a coloring book?

And the other instance. Sharon bit back a sob as the memory resurfaced. It had happened right after Sharon's move to I.A. Scott had been a good cop. Well-liked, charming, incredibly kind-hearted. He had even been a friend to the new head of Internal Affairs. He'd been Sharon's best friend. He'd even charmed her children. Became their favorite uncle.

He had been working especially hard to bust a drug ring. He was sure that the success would give him the something extra that would earn him the promotion for which he and three other officers had been competing. But something had gone horribly wrong. While on a stakeout, he and another officer had somehow blown their cover. Their car had been riddled with bullets. It had only taken one to instantly end the life of Scott's partner. Scott, however, had been hit by six: 1 in the hip, 1 in the flank, 1 in the wrist, 2 in the spine, and 1 in the brain.

Sharon recalled overhearing two nurses talking about Scott's case while she waited to see him. One of the nurses recounted the trip to MRI. How he'd left the bed in the machine a bloody mess. How everyone in the monitoring booth had gasped as one after one, the bullets had appeared on the screen. How one of the doctors had joked that the bullet in his lower spine was pretty pointless as the one above it had paralyzed that part of Scott's body anyway.

Sharon cut off the water. She wished she could cut off the memories so easily. Her five minutes of wallowing were up but she couldn't stop what happened next from playing in her mind. The neurologist had come out of Scott's room. He had led her over to a bench and asked her to sit. Then, right there in the hallway, he had quietly informed her that the bullet in Scott's brain was nestled in his speech center. Not only would Scott never walk again, he would never speak again, either.

Sharon had tried to be strong enough for Scott. It was summertime and the kids were at their dad's so she went to stay in Scott's guest bedroom. She cooked and cleaned. She drove Scott to his rehab appointments. He'd almost seemed to cheer up some. But then summer ended and Sharon had had to go back home. A nurse took Sharon's place in the guest room. Less than a year after surviving six bullets, it only took one bullet in the brain to kill Scott. And he had been the one to put it there.

Sharon wiped her tears as she snatched a fresh outfit from her closet. No. Life could not be that cruel to her twice. Brenda would wake up and be her infuriating self. She'd be good as new in no time. She'd argue with Sharon in her ridiculously thick drawl. She'd sashay into Sharon's kitchen for a glass of merlot and a brownie on Saturday movie nights. Her head would drop onto Sharon's shoulder because even though she often ended up working long, awful Saturdays, she never called to cancel a movie night unless she had been expressly called in. Even if it meant falling asleep on Sharon's shoulder.

It struck Sharon then that she had never stopped to wonder why a dinner with Fritz never took precedence over movie night. How could she have been oblivious to a separation? They'd had six movie nights so far and one of them would swing to the other's office more than once a week for lunch and to chat about cases. It was hard to believe that it had never come up in conversation and Brenda certainly had had no reason to keep it a secret from Sharon. Sharon put it from her mind. It was not important at the moment and they would have plenty of time to talk about little things like entire marriages ending after Brenda's recovery.

While grabbing her sweater off of the arm of the sofa, Sharon went ahead and plucked "When Harry Met Sally" off of the movie shelf and placed it on the coffee table. It was her turn to pick the movie and Brenda had never seen that one. They'd watch it on their next movie night.


	7. Chapter 7

_**It has taken me an unforgivable amount of time to update this thing. I'm going to go ahead and blame it on Murphy's Law. I just wrote this chapter at a Starbucks because my internet at home refuses to be fixed. With the amount of computer trouble I've been having as of late, I'm pretty damn convinced that my home is built on an Indian burial ground. Or a Luddite burial ground? Cursed ground, anyway. Thank you all so much for the reviews. I'm sorry my chapters are so short! I keep saying that I'm working on it. Hopefully you all will see some progress in that department in the near future but who knows. Let me know what you think of how I've **_**finally _continued this story and in what direction you'd like to see it move! Reviews are so helpful and so very appreciated. I'm open to all suggestions! Thanks for reading!_**

Sharon sat by Brenda's bed, considerably more presentable than she had been an hour and a half ago. There was something to be said about the comfort of clean hair and pressed clothes. Maybe she was a bit on the stuffy side, but there couldn't be anything wrong in a person gaining comfort from wherever possible, could there? And that thought, as most thoughts had in the past 12 hours or so, led her back to the still form lying in the bed before her. Sharon folded her hands next to Brenda's on the scratchy, white blanket.

Her eyes flitted to the monitor jutting out from the wall. Sharon remembered her daughter's last visit from college and how she'd gushed about her favorite hospital drama until finally forcing Sharon to marathon it with her. Sharon had been instantly hooked. On the show, the monitors beeped steady rhythms to match the patient's pulse. Brenda's machines were silent. Sharon throat constricted for a moment before she realized that she was being foolish. Machines couldn't just beep constantly in hospitals. Nurses would have psychotic breaks left and right. She stared at the screen for a while, keeping watch over the little green spikes of Brenda's brittle heartbeat. All of the sudden, Sharon felt a fluttering at her fingertips. She willed herself to keep breathing as she leaned toward Brenda. The sleeping Chief's dark eyelashes fluttered before parting.

* * *

Brenda's head was full of tapioca. It was an awful excuse for dessert and an even worse replacement for gray matter, she decided. She chose against opening her eyes right away. She wasn't in her bed. She knew that. Since Fritz had moved out, she'd been slowly expanding her collection of pillows and whatever this _thing_ was beneath her head, it would never pass as a pillow in her book. Plus, the sheets were a thread count of 20, perhaps, and the blanket... Well, they were of some man-made fabric that Sharon would no doubt balk at.

_Sharon. _Had she been there? Brenda had surmised by now that she was lying in a hospital bed. The hiss of a leaking wall-mounted oxygen and the overwhelmingly obvious odor of an attempt at masking urine with antiseptic spray had given it away. Brenda remembered a room full of medical personnel. They had been rushing around her, crushing her, bleeding her, saving her. And Sharon had been there- of that Brenda was sure.

Brenda could feel a small bit of warmth at her fingertips. They unconsciously stretched out, seeking comfort. Brenda heard a small intake of breath from the general direction of her bedside. She heard a shifting and a small draft blew her way. It carried with it the familiar scent of earth and crushed flowers.

Brenda attempted to open her eyes but they flatly refused. She took a moment to explain to them that she was the boss and tried again. They slowly obeyed. Sharon was seated right next to Brenda's bed with her back to the window. Brenda couldn't see her face but the silhouette was unmistakable. She sat perfectly straight and who else's hair looked like that in a hospital? Despite the setting or circumstance, Brenda couldn't help but smile.

"Hi," she said. Or she tried to say. Her throat seemed to be full of broken glass. She frowned and whispered it instead. Sharon's face crinkled a bit but sorted itself out a moment later. She gave Brenda a sad but warm little smile.

"Hello, yourself." Her hand swept up and dashed behind her glasses for a moment. Brenda was surprised to see that Sharon's fingertips were wet when they returned to the blanket.

"Oh, no. Don't you go all weepy on me. I've known you for - what - three years now? You've got a reputation of being a tough nut to crack. Don't go soft on me now!" Brenda didn't know what she would do if Sharon started crying. Sharon Raydor rarely cried. Her tears were as rare as a sighting of bigfoot buying tennis shoes at a Lady Foot Locker. Well, maybe not _that_ rare, but definitely close. Sharon chuckled and cleared her throat.

"Alright. I'll promise not to cry if you'll promise to stop talking until I can get a nurse in here to look at your throat. You sound like Mercedes McCambridge." Brenda's brows furrowed. "Pazuzu? ... From 'The Exorcist?' " Brenda shook her head and Sharon responded with a disgusted grunt.

"It's going on the list of movie night films. Lots of cursing. Projectile vomiting. You have no idea what you're in for."

As Sharon left the room, she was followed by a raspy chuckle.

* * *

Sharon closed the door behind her and sagged against it. The tears that she'd worked so hard to keep contained in Brenda's presence flowed freely down her cheeks. She felt a hand on her shoulder and lifted her eyes to meet those of Andy Flynn. His face was devoid of color and Sharon rushed to calm his fears.

"Nothing's wrong! She's fine. She's awake." His sigh swept her hair from her cheek and she was amazed again by the closeness of Brenda's division.

"Then why the hell are you mourning outside her hospital room? You should be ecstatic!" As concerned as he was for Sharon, it was obvious that he was equal parts overjoyed to hear the news.

"I- uh. I'm sorry. I am happy. Oh, God, I am. I just... I'm tired." She tried at a laugh but it came out sounding just a tad too pathetic to be convincing so she let it trail off. "I was so scared, Andy. She's my best friend. I think I've seen too many awful things happen to her in the past day. I don't see how she can be alive. I'm afraid I'll wake up and it won't be true." Andy blinked, surprised at Sharon's frankness. He gave her shoulder a sudden pinch.

"Son of a bitch, Andy!" She looked around quickly, hoping that her harsh whisper hadn't carried down the hallway. She was more surprised than hurt but that didn't stop her from swatting Andy's hand away.

"You're awake," Flynn said. He blinked at her. She blinked back and then grinned. She gratefully accepted the handkerchief he offered her and dried her cheeks. She took a steadying breath, gave him back his handkerchief, and squared her shoulders.

"Thank you. I'm good now. You go in there and see her, now. Don't let her strain her voice, alright? I'm going to track down her doctor."

Flynn smiled at the steely glint that had returned to her eye and was relieved to see that the old Darth Raydor that everybody knew and loved- well, hated, really- had returned. As he turned to enter Brenda's room, he knew that his Chief was in good hands.


End file.
